


Ain't No Compass, Brother

by saellys



Category: Hadestown (Musical)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-30
Updated: 2012-07-30
Packaged: 2017-11-11 01:54:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/473161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saellys/pseuds/saellys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Orpheus returns to the upper world, and Hermes sets about putting him back together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ain't No Compass, Brother

**Author's Note:**

> I was kind of bummed to see that all the Hadestown fic was Hades/Persephone, so I wrote this. No actual slash, but I'm sure they got around to it.

Hermes waited for the train that came but twice a year, and nursed his jar of dandelion wine. Night was falling in the middle ground where the foothills got swallowed up in an ocean of creeper vines, and the locusts sang along with his harmonica. Together they were so raucous, he didn’t hear the poor boy until Orpheus trudged right past him.

He looked like he’d scraped himself up off the rails. Hermes had seen some broken men before, some walking shades with no light in their eyes, men with nothing in all the world left to them. Orpheus wasn’t quite there, but he was too near for Hermes’s liking. His clothes, not fine to begin with, were soot-black and torn. His proud head drooped and tears left two tracks down his face. He’d been beaten in all the ways a man could, and he wore it.

Knees creaking, Hermes stood and fetched the boy’s banjo from the hollow tree where he’d put it for safekeeping. He caught up with Orpheus and held the instrument out to him; Orpheus took it in his long fingers and set about tuning it as if in a dream. After a moment he plucked a string and a single woebegone note floated off on the breeze. A mourning dove caught it and sent it back.

Hermes was afraid to ask, but he had to. “The girl?”

Orpheus’s threefold voice cracked. “Gone.” The word was a sob, but he’d already cried himself dry. Hermes wondered how long he’d knelt in the shingle outside the Styx and wept for her, and what distant thought had brought him to his feet and sent him shuffling back here. He tried to think of something to say, but nothing came. He could curse Eurydice, but that wouldn’t change a thing. It was done. How it was done hardly seemed to matter. 

The boy swayed like a lush and would have fallen if Hermes didn’t catch him under the arms. Before Orpheus could stumble again, he pulled him along, following the tracks away. Away from where it began, away from the memories, away from telephone wires and high walls and the memory of his muse. Toward anyplace but Hadestown.

“Where are we going?” Orpheus murmured. Brown leaves spiraled down from the trees in the wake of his voice. The locusts had gone silent out of respect.

“Gonna go find your voice, brother,” Hermes told him. He passed Orpheus the jar and the boy took a swig, gaining what strength he could from it. “I hear there’s a barkeep out west called Dionysus who pays handsome for musicians.” 

Orpheus only nodded. Hermes kept his arm around the boy’s shoulders, and they followed the fading light. They had their legs; that would have to be enough.


End file.
